London Review Bookshop Podcast

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David Russell & Adam Phillips: On Marion Milner & Creativity Jun 11, 2025

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Marion Milner, across her long career as psychoanalyst, essayist and artist, thought deeply about creativity in all its forms, exploring fields as diverse as anthropology, folklore, education, literature, art, philosophy, mysticism, and psychology. In Marion Milner: On Creativity, David Russell, Professor of English at the University of California, uses these ideas as a starting-point for an exploration of Milner’s thought and its continuing relevance today. Russell was in conversation with psychoanalyst and essayist Adam Phillips, whose most recent book is On Giving Up (Hamish Hamilton, 2024).

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Rebecca Solnit & Carole Cadwalladr: No Straight Road Takes You There Jun 04, 2025

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Rebecca Solnit’s latest essay collection explores subjects as diverse as the climate crisis, toxic masculinity and the rise of the far right with her usual flair and capacity for radical hope: Merlin Sheldrake has described No Straight Road Takes You Thereas ‘a book of fierce and poetic thinking - and a guide for navigating a rapidly changing, non-linear, living world’.

Solnit was joined in conversation by investigative journalist and campaigner Carole Cadwalladr.

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Margaret Atwood and Sarah Howe: Paper Boat May 28, 2025

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Before she became a well-known novelist, Margaret Atwood was an award-winning poet. She has been publishing poetry for more than 60 years, from the self-published, hand-set Double Persephone in 1961 to its follow up The Circle Game which won the Governor General’s Award, to her latest, critically-acclaimed collection Dearly in 2020.Paper Boat (Chatto & Windus) draws on that impressive body of work, and expands on it with poems previously uncollected, revealing an artist who has somehow always managed to be at the height of her powers, and to have her finger on every pulse.

Atwood appeared at Conway Hall to discuss her work with poet, editor and critic Sarah Howe. They were joined by poets Amy Key and Rachel Long who read poems from Paper Boat throughout the evening.

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Solvej Balle & Chris Power: On the Calculation of Volume May 21, 2025

Show notes

‘Every morning, she wakes up to the 18th of November. She no longer expects to wake up to the 19th of November, and she no longer remembers the 17th of November as if it were yesterday.’

Solvej Balle’s septology On the Calculation of Volume (Faber), thirty years in the making, was published in Danish by the author’s own press to huge and universal acclaim: ‘Absolutely, absolutely incredible’ (Karl Ove Knausgaard); ‘Unforgettable’ (Hernan Díaz); ‘A total explosion’ (Nicole Krauss). Now Faber has brought the first two volumes of her masterpiece to an anglophone readership in a vibrant translation by Barbara J. Haveland, the first of which has been nominated for this year’s International Booker Prize.

Balle was joined in conversation by novelist and critic Chris Power.

Get the books: https://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/stock/on-the-calculation-of-volume-i-absolutely-absolutely-incredible.-knausgard-solvej-balle

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Ali Smith & Sarah Wood: Gliff May 14, 2025

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Gliff, the latest novel from Ali Smith, forms the first part of a duology; its title, the Scots word for a glimpse or shock, will be echoed but not replicated in next year’s Glyph. In a dystopian, Kafkaesque fictional lanscape, Smith explores how we make meaning and are made by it, and what it would actually mean for the next generation to sort out our increasingly toxic world.

Smith read from the novel and was in conversation with artist and filmmaker Sarah Wood.

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Josh Cohen & Will Davies: All the Rage May 07, 2025

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Josh Cohen’s new book, All the Rage (Granta), explores anger, in all its permutations - social media arguments, political divides, road rage, passive aggression – in the words of Deborah Levy, ‘brilliantly investigating what it is when we are enraged’. What should we make of our anger; to what use can we put it?

Cohen’s previous books include Not Working and The Private Life. He was in conversation with the sociologist and political economist William Davies, whose most recent book is Nervous States: How Feeling Took Over the World.

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Sarah Clegg & Ronald Hutton: The Dead of Winter Apr 30, 2025

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In The Dead of Winter, Sarah Clegg – author of the HWA Crown Award-shortlisted Woman’s Lore - looks behind the tinsel and the turkey to explore the darker traditions of the Christmas season. At wassails, hoodenings and winter gatherings, attended by ghastly, grinning horses, snatching monsters and mysterious visitors, we discover how these customs and rituals originated and how they changed through the centuries, and ask ourselves: if we can't keep the darkness entirely at bay, might it be fun to let a little in?

She was joined in conversation about all this and more with Ronald Hutton, historian, folklorist and professor of history at Bristol University.

Find more events at the Bookshop: https://lrb.me/eventspod

Get the book: https://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/stock/the-dead-of-winter-the-demons-witches-and-ghosts-of-christmas-sarah-clegg

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Eileen Myles & Amelia Abraham: a “Working Life” Apr 23, 2025

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Eileen Myles reads from their first collection of poetry since 2018’s Evolution. The poems in a “Working Life” evoke the joy and unease in the quotidian, moving ‘with call and response between perception and thought’, as Camille Roy writes in Brooklyn Rail magazine.

Myles is in conversation with journalist and activist Amelia Abraham, whose Queer Intentions was published by Picador in 2020.

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Isabelle Baafi & Lavinia Greenlaw: Chaotic Good Apr 16, 2025

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Isabelle Baafi, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award for her pamphlet Ripe, constructs her debut collection Chaotic Good (Faber) around the story of an escape from a toxic marriage. ‘Chaotic Good is a debut of amazing endurance,’ writes poet Will Harris. ‘Its formal pressures create a kind of kaleidoscopic intensity that – with each turn of the chamber – brings newly beautiful and painful shapes into focus.’

Isabelle Baafi read from her work in the company of Lavinia Greenlaw, whose most recent book is the essay collection The Vast Extent.

Find more events a the Bookshop: https://lrb.me/eventspod

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Zarina Muhammad & Gabrielle de la Puente with Olivia Sudjic: Poor Artists Apr 09, 2025

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In Poor Artists (Particular Books) Zarina Muhammad and Gabrielle de la Puente (AKA The White Pube), explore the bizarre world of contemporary art through their protagonist Quest Talukdar. In surreal encounters with other artists, Quest learns profound truths about money and power, and must decide whether she cares more about success or staying true to herself. Blending storytelling with dialogue from anonymised interviews with artists and art workers – including a Turner Prize winner or two, a few ghosts, a Venice Biennale fraudster and a communist messiah – Poor Artists is a unique portrayal of the emotional, existential and financial experience of artists today. Joining them in conversation was Olivia Sudjic (Asylum Road, Sympathy).

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